Climate Science Concepts Born in Hamburg

Hans von Storch is director emeritus of the Institute of Coastal Research of the Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht (HZG), professor at the University of Hamburg and professor at the Ocean University of China (Qingdao). From 1987 - 1995, he was Senior Scientist at the Max Planck-Institute for Meteorology, where he worked with Klaus Hasselmann. His research interests are climate diagnostics and statistical climatology, regional climate change and its transdisciplinary context. He has published 27 books, among them ＂Statistical Analysis in Climate Research＂ with Francis Zwiers.

Martin Claussen is Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and retired Professor of Physical Meteorology at the Universität Hamburg. Claussen’s scientific interests are climate system modelling with a focus on the global interaction between vegetation, land surface and climate. He has studied the non-linear dynamics of the Sahara and its greening in the past and possible changes in a warming climate in the future. He is also interested in the history of climate science.

Martin Heimann is Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute of Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany. He is also retired Honorary Professor of the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena and Research Director at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Over the last five decades Martin Heimann has worked on analysing and modelling the global carbon cycle and its interaction with the physical climate system.

Robert Sausen is a retired head of department at the DLR-Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre and is an apl. Professor of meteorology at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München. He started his career as a climate modeler at the MPI for Meteorology. Since more than three decades he has studied the impact of transport, in particular aviation, on the composition of the atmosphere and on climate. He has also developed techniques for mitigating the climate impact of aviation by operational means.

Eduardo Zorita is a physicist by training and climate scientist specializing in paleoclimate research. With a strong focus on reconstructing past climate conditions, he has contributed to understanding past long-term climate variability and its drivers. His research employs climate models and proxy data, and statistical analysis to uncover patterns of change across the past millennia, providing insights into current and future climate trends. He has previously worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, at the University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris and currently is with the Helmholtz-Centre Hereon in Geesthacht, Germany.